Terry Marotta: We’re all in this together

Monday

Feb 21, 2011 at 12:01 AMFeb 21, 2011 at 9:17 PM

Very soon, according to the futurists, technology will have advanced to the point that death will be conquered. The cover story of last week’s Time magazine was “2045: The Year Man Becomes Immortal.” But in the meantime, what can we do to feel less marooned, each in a slowly failing vessel, each trapped in the present moment, this one, then this one and this one?

Terry Marotta

Very soon, according to the futurists, technology will have advanced to the point that death will be conquered. The cover story of last week’s Time magazine was “2045: The Year Man Becomes Immortal.”

The man at the center of the piece is Ray Kurzweil, futurist and principal developer of a hundred inventions. Thanks to him and Dragon Software, I now dictate most of my e-mails.

And soon I may not even have to do that.

According to him, as Time reports, “Your average cell phone is about a millionth the size of, a millionth the price of and a thousand times more powerful than the computer he had at MIT 40 years ago.”

Imagine? Surely soon the whole phone will exist in its earpiece. Then we’ll be getting them implanted just under the rug of our scalps and be simply beaming our thoughts to one another 24/7 and voila!

An end to individual consciousness.

And with that an end to all envy, covetousness, anger and maybe the rest of the seven deadly sins, too.

These vices will simply lift like a toxic fog, based as the are in obsessions over who has what and how much we see as rightfully “ours.”

Just think: mutual ongoing awareness of how it is for the other guy! All joy: shared! All sorrow: instantly felt! Birthday cards, valentines, holiday cards: no longer required!

It sounds like the afterlife almost.

But! In the meantime what can we do to feel less marooned, each in a slowly failing vessel, each trapped in the present moment, this one, then this one and this one?

Well, we can talk to one another.

Here are three super-short exchanges I had in just in the last 24 hours:

At the drive-thru, the young woman at the window breathed deeply, then kind of lifted her ribcage up out of her lower torso.

“Does your back hurt?” I asked her.

“Ugh, all of me hurts! I play sports. But yes, my back does hurt. They say I have scoliosis,” she said, making a sad face.

“A surprising number of people have some degree of scoliosis, but they can do much these days,” I said. “Plus you’re finding out about it good and early.”

“I know! I just have to finish growing and then they’ll see,” she said with her dazzling young smile.

An hour later at the electronics store the man processing the paperwork for my new TV looked up when a small child trotted past in a pair of twinkling light-up sneakers.

“I want shoes like that!” he said. “They’re all I’ve ever wanted!”

“Me, too! For those special nights out!”

“For tripping the light fantastic!” he said. “But they STILL don’t come in my size!”

And an hour after that I was in line at the post office and called out to Wendy (at the window on the left) to ask how her beloved birds were. She called, “Hi, honey!” and gave an upbeat answer.

Then, when I brought my package to Sam (at the window in the middle) he shouted, “TT! How you doing TT?!” because he knows that’s what my family calls me.

He knows because I must have told him once.

It’s good to tell things, I think.

I say let yourself be known, by as many people as you run into in the course of your day and you’ll feel just fine and dandy - until that great new era comes when we experience the Spock-like ‘mind-meld’ said to be just up ahead and waiting.

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